Less populism. Or the 5 Star Movement will have no future

The dispute between Grillo and Conte over how to reorient M5S is just a power play that becomes all the more bitter the more the boat treads water.

The real problem with the Genovese comedian's creature is not so much the organizational model, the chain of command, the methods of imaginative internal democracy that has always been a mix of leader authoritarianism embellished with internet consultations among a few intimates.

The real problem is the political identity of M5S, a formation that Martin Wolf , an authoritative journalist of the Financial Times, calls populist of the center.

The ingredients of the success that began 11 years ago were: delegitimization of traditional political elites, verbal aggression, simplistic catchphrases without practicable concrete content, a romantic anti-capitalism with the dystopia of happy degrowth-happy only for those who can afford it-an ecologism without head or tail, total vagueness in foreign policy, and the presumption of solving complex problems-such as poverty-with squinternate measures.

The M5S led two governments under Giuseppe Conte and began to lose support while in power. Most of the promises were not kept because it was impossible to do so. Otherwise, the M5S gradually broke away from the screaming populism of Grillo's square and became a populist party in Parliament, maneuvering and opportunistic in its alliances. It has not grown more of an adequate ruling class ,especially at the local level, and has not developed a clear strategy to challenge the Pd for hegemony in the reformist area.

Then again, a populist party when it has to become truly reformist has to sound off from the comfortable pedestal of proclamations, get its hands in the game, and show that it can come up with concrete solutions. And this work Conte has not done. The M5S hold was largely due to the citizenship income and the stubborn defense of the 110% superbonus. When Meloni cancelled the two measures Conte boasted about, the flight of part of the M5S electoral base began. A predictable drubbing.

The coveted overtaking of the PD did not happen. Meanwhile, the alliance between the Greens and the far left has taken away some of the former Cricketers' ecological workhorses and social claims

 Now the M5S must decide: return to the old days of demagoguery and then run for isolation or try to make a quantum leap by rediscovering the spirit of its origins but leaving everything else in the attic.  

Returning to populism for someone who has led two governments is a poor way to go: he had power and did not deliver what you promised. Instead, Conte should relaunch two distinctive elements of the M5S story: moral rigor and in the public sphere, without subservience to the justicialism of certain judiciary, and attention to the weaker sections of society not to manipulate their consensus but to put them at the center of the political agenda. To do this, the M5S must abandon populism and rediscover some elements of popularism, which is quite another thing. In short, the M5s must move from adolescence to maturity: addressing problems with rationality and concreteness without taking refuge in the comfort zone Of irresponsible demagoguery. If it does not do so, it will condemn itself to becoming a sect of a few followers who chant slogans like litanies but are completely irrelevant in political life.